OLPC:Support gang

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  This page is part of the OLPC Support Gang.   [ Request Tracker's Frequently Mentioned | Weekly meetings ]

The Support Gang is a group of worldwide volunteers that help other users. When teachers & kids ask for help with their XO via email, forum, chat room and sometimes phone, these are the brave volunteers who answer your questions. We meet most Fridays and Sundays to build strong mentoring relationships around our favorite Projects, listen to Guest Speakers discuss the very latest, and deliver high-quality Community Support to make the OLPC/XO/Sugar experience better every day.

Many of our 200+ volunteers are also involved in local Grassroots groups, Authoring Documentation, Community Repair, Testing, Project Mentoring, Advocacy, Global Sustainability -- as well as their very own classroom deployments!

Join us!

You do not have to be a developer, or even super technical to help other people.

• Do you have exceptional writing, technical and/or organizational abilities?
  
• Are you naturally supportive and friendly towards those who are eager to just get started?
  
• Do you demonstrate sincerity, appreciate an earnest team, and always adore learning?
  

In the end, Community Support Volunteers deliver high-quality Tech Support/Learning Support to One Laptop per Child users, teachers and kids worldwide -- as problem-solvers and educators -- each in their own voice. Our growing team includes truly exceptional individuals of all ages, meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts and by telephone for weekly calls.

See our mailing list info page to apply!

2015 UPDATE: PLEASE JOIN OUR NEW PUBLIC FORUM & MAILING LIST SUPPORTING ALL OLPC AND SIMILAR DEPLOYMENTS IF YOU CAN HELP! http://groups.google.com/group/unleashkids

Community Projects

• Helpers@Laptop will be a twice-weekly series of highly personal interviews, explaining WHY we help, and WHAT we are accomplishing...

• Blogging and Microblogging about One Laptop per Child learning opportunities the world does not yet understand.

• ClassActs begun Sept 6-11, 2009 in Washington DC, is a growing archive of community deployment stories around entrepreneurial teachers and actual volunteers making this happen.

Tools

• IRC Live Chat

• Our core support-gang mailing list (join our debates on how to deliver the world's very best support, on a shoestring!)

• Support FAQ / RTFM's - The core of our communications deliverables. So many requests fall into a handful of categories (can I get a laptop, how do I activate my T-mobile account, etc) that we continually refine our library of finest responses.

• http://forum.laptop.org

Recruiting

  A. RTool Admin(s):  Seize the opportunity to build out real ToolSmithing
around worldwide OLPC Support.  Work closely with OLPC grassroots leadership
to drive our support community's workflow forward, scaling up from 100
proven volunteers towards 1000.

  B. Librarian:  Organize our exploding corpus of public and private Support
Documentation.  A literary, social, organized and driven volunteer would be
absolutely ideal.  Please all apply!

  C. Community Organizer:  Write regular public newsletters for our Support
Gang team, explain our successes, introduce new members, develop an online &
offline Social Network irrefutably demonstrating the rewards of participaction!

CONTACT: holt AT laptop.org including your phone number -- I will call you back in any country.

Trips / BBQ

• Founder & coordinator Adam Holt visited almost 20 volunteers in early July 2008, driving from Boston to Chicago, Atlanta and beyond to meet with and understand the beating heart of OLPC.

• Boston BBQ Oct 5, 2008

• European trips in 2008 and 2009

• West Coast & other trips forthcoming -- JOIN US

History

Begun in December 2007, we are fortunate to have an amazingly enthusiastic and deeply talented diverse team. Our group is named "Support Gang" rather than just "Tech Support" as we support learning as well as technology, and are increasingly supportive of our growing base of 3rd World users who have tech-support needs quite different than those of (for example) the United States. While the majority of our members have core competencies that are technically-based, we value strength through diversity; and have educators, entrepreneurs, artists, and more, including people with no formal technical background whatsoever. All Support Gang(st)ers, however, are computer-adept and willing to learn community technologies they don't already know!